Time outs or the story of how a favorite national sport influences work cultures!

The worlds truly global sporting event is on- make way on the couch! There is nothing more global than the sport of football ..ahem soccer! Local tastes however in Canada and USA differ. Canada prefers Hockey and USA the NFL version of football.

Since it is the football world cup- I will stick to soccer vs NFL for the time being . In a broader article and hopefully my future book, I will include Hockey and Canada and Cricket and India as well!

What always strikes me as a great difference between people growing on a healthy dose of soccer is that they think in the terms of halves vs the NFL followers thinking in Quarters!

Don't believe yet that sports affect cultures?- dive a little deeper-

After all playing sports is a fun way to learn and is a group activity at school- it has a definitive impact on personalities. While Soccer drives fluid strategic thinking on the go with flexibility of roles, American football thrives on strategic plays broken down into 3 chances and specific roles and teams. This makes soccer players better situation handlers and football players better strategic executers. While I cannot argue if one works better than the other, I do believe certain roles in an organization could benefit from one or the other type of thinking.

Soccer drives meticulous planning before the 45 minutes start , while in NFL a general game plan is then driven by specific planed strategic plays.

One other striking difference that comes to mind is the scoring difference. While in soccer, there is only one point when the ball is in the nets, the NFL version allows multiple types of scoring, - field goal, touch down - and then some- 1 or 2 extra points! This reminds me of the difference in compensation packages between the oceans - fixed bonus versus compensation strategies!

Finally my favorite- time outs- - nope nothing like time outs in soccer- which can either be used to slow the game or regroup !

the gist- soccer- fluid 45 minute halves , football broken into many fixed milestones (10 yards at a time!)

Enjoy the game!